Last week, we drove down to the lower bits of North Carolina, and then slowly worked our way back home stopping at various beach communities.
The towns that we visited ranged from swanky to seedy. The last hotel was so worrisome that we flipped over the mattresses to check for bed bugs.
The drive also took us through some parts of the country where people live in rusty tin shacks in the middle of a corn field. One local newspaper mentioned the fact that 60% of all babies in the area were born to single mothers. Strip malls have check cashing stores and stores that auction off foreclosured furniture.
And then we come home to the carefully manicured lawns and congested highways. It's whiplash.
We talked to lots of people along the way. Mostly because we like pumping people for information on good, local restaurants. Although, I did have very good luck with TripAdvisor this time around.
What did all these communities – beach and farm, swanky and seedy – have in common? The love of BBQ.
Best of the trip: Woody's in Chincoteague and the Pig Man in Nag's Head.
I think the love of BBQ is so universal that I think I could make a political platform based solely on this food group and get elected to any office.
Apt. 11d 
Politically, the love of BBQ would be about as unifying as Christianity was in Europe during the Thirty Years War.
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I’m pretty sure southern BBQ is made out of glue. That stuff looks nasty.
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And lemonade of all sorts is fabulous. But what’s an Emerson Taylor?
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There are apparently many, many different schools of BBQ. Our (not fancy) grocery store stocks dozens of different regionally themed varieties sauces, and I believe there are also regional preferences in meat choice.
After we moved to Texas, I soon discovered the existence of something I’ve never seen before: a combination grill/smoker/trailer (not sure about the exact terminology) that can be hitched to a towing vehicle. We also have a lot of Czech and German influence on local meat culture (those being two nationalities that take meat very seriously). Our home this year is about two blocks away from a Czech (I think) BBQ/sausage place that always has a parking lot jammed with tradesmen’s vehicles around lunchtime.
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The Google says an Emerson Taylor is half tea, half lemonade.
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Around here, we call that an Arnold Palmer. I hadn’t realized that the John Daly jokes based on the drink named Arnold Palmer were now actual things you could order.
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